Friday, October 6, 2017

So, What's Up With Catalonia?

Via ZeroHedge:

Catalonia’s drive for “independence” has unleashed a chain
reaction of viral social media support that’s frighteningly resurrected
civil war-era rhetoric, but the most dangerous consequences of this
domino effect are yet to come if the separatists are ultimately
successful in their quest.

The Nostalgia Narrative
The Catalan “independence” cause
has taken the world by storm, thrown into the global spotlight by the
heavily publicized referendum earlier this week and Madrid’s forceful
response to this unconstitutional measure. Supporters all across the
world have been energized by the recent events and have taken to
describing them in civil war-era terms as a battle between “democracy”
and “fascism”. Furthermore, they also accuse the Rajoy government of
being “Francoists”, as they do the country’s post-Franco 1978
Constitution which returned Catalonia’s autonomy in an even more robust
way than before and even bestowed this privilege to the rest of the
country as well.

Although it can be safely presumed that Spain naturally retained some
of the “Francoist” members of its permanent military, intelligence, and
diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) after the death of their
movement’s eponymous leader, it’s an exaggeration to refer to the
constitution and the present government as “Francoists” in the sense of
what the term stereotypically implies. Rather, the improper use of such
polarizing civil war-era terms demonstrates that the separatists are
trying to capitalize on the revolutionary nostalgia that their domestic
and foreign supporters have for reliving the 1936-1939 anarcho-communist
experiment via a simulacrum, one which plays out differently depending
on their audience.Two Simulacra
As it relates to the Catalans themselves, this is meant to force them
into the false binary choice between “standing with their ancestors
against fascism” or “betraying their motherland for the Francoists”.
Concerning the foreign supporters of the Catalan separatists, they’re
supposed to get riled up and vent their hatred against Madrid and
impassioned support for Barcelona all throughout social media, picking
up on the cue that they should inaccurately compare modern-day Madrid to
post-Maidan Kiev in making the Alt-Media argument that Catalonia has as
much of a right to “independence” as Crimea does to its reunification
with Russia.

This is a false equivocation, the full debunking of which isn’t the
focus of this article however, as it’s important enough in this context
to draw attention to the polemical chain reaction that’s being spun by
the separatists and their supporters in crafting a self-interested
narrative for serving their cause. There are many well-intentioned
individuals who are standing behind Barcelona, so it’s not at all to
infer that most of them don’t sincerely believe in this interpretation
of events, but the point here is just to highlight how Catalonia’s
“independence” crusade is exploiting historical memory and revolutionary
nostalgia in order to advance its organizers’ argument that the region
needs to split from Spain.

Spanish ScenariosCentralized Crackdown:
While most people might be led to think that the Catalan Crisis is
solely between Barcelona and Madrid, the fact is that it actually
involves all of Spain and is poised to have geopolitical reverberations
throughout the entirety of Europe. Concerning the politically unstable
Iberian country, Catalonia’s separatist campaign already crossed the
Rubicon of no return after the referendum and Madrid’s reaction to it,
so there’s no going back to the previous status quo. This means that
only three scenarios are probable: a centralized crackdown, Identity
Federalism, and separatism. The first one could see the state implement
Article 155 of the constitution in temporarily imposing direct rule over
the region, though with the expected consequence being that it might
catalyze a low-scale civil war if the Catalans resort to
terrorist-insurgent tactics to resist.

Identity Federalism:
The next scenario is Identity Federalism,
which would require the revocation or reform of Article 145 in
devolving the centralized state into a federation or confederation of
regions, each of which could theoretically function as quasi-independent
statelets with their own economic, military, and foreign policies.
Essentially, this would be the transplantation of the Bosnian model onto
Spain, albeit with added privileges given to each constituent member.
As with the centralized crackdown scenario, this is likely to lead to
violence, and would probably only occur as a “compromise solution” to
any prolonged conflict. Madrid does not want to lose control of the
country and see the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe
“Balkanized” like its namesake counterpart in Southeastern Europe, which
is why this outcome probably wouldn’t ever happen in peacetime.

Secessionism:
Finally, the last possibility for how the Catalan Crisis could play
out is that the restive region becomes “independent” from Spain and is
recognized by at least one country or more, which in all likelihood
might end up being some of the Baltic and/or Balkan states before anyone
else. Spain wouldn’t be able to survive in its present
administrative-political format with the loss of roughly 20% of its GDP,
so the rump state would either have to be radically reformed, undergo a
“stabilizing” military coup, or fully collapse in a collection of
“countries” just like the former Yugoslavia did a generation ago....MORE